


Brand

by Fuzziestpuppy



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Drinking, Drug Use, F/M, M/M, Other: See Story Notes, Rating May Change, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:54:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28634328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuzziestpuppy/pseuds/Fuzziestpuppy
Summary: In Pagan’s opinion, this whole business of soulmates and marks and things reeked abominably of New Age bullshit.And then, of course, he’d ended up saddled with one of the fucking things.
Relationships: Ajay Ghale/Pagan Min, Ishwari Ghale/Pagan Min
Comments: 14
Kudos: 28





	1. Ashwin, 1990

**Author's Note:**

> Suicidal ideation is briefly mentioned in the first chapter, as well as an adult hitting a child and slight self-harm in the second. So just a heads-up, but all of it seems pretty mild to me and not bad enough to warrant tagging...especially in light of the source material.
> 
> Thank you, [brokibrodinson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokibrodinson/pseuds/brokibrodinson), [BunnyMoss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BunnyMoss/pseuds/BunnyMoss), and [sand_shoes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sand_shoes/pseuds/sand_shoes) for being such wonderful beta readers.

***

“What is that?” Ishwari says, from somewhere behind his left shoulder.

If he’s going to cut himself at all, it’ll be at this stage, Pagan thinks, preoccupied. He makes short, careful swipes with the straight razor before lifting his chin to work around his Adam’s apple.

Focused on that and the speech he’s currently writing in his head and with half an ear on the living room, where their two small hellions are currently engaged in some game that seems to involve a lot of ungodly screeching, it takes him whole seconds to respond.

“What is what, my dear?” Pagan says absently to her reflection as he rinses off and checks for missed spots.

More shrieks from the other room, interspersed with peals of baby laughter. The sheer volume that two toddlers can generate boggles the mind, but as long as they’re squealing happily, chances are that neither of them are bleeding and nothing’s been outright destroyed.

It’s when they’re being quiet that they have to worry.

Like the time when he was working in his office and had caught the concerning sound of small, mischievous whisperings. Not that he’s been a father for long, but plenty long enough to know trouble when he heard it. Suspicious, he’d gone to check on them, and just as he set foot through the doorway his little girl had cried out those words; those dreaded words that would chill any parent’s soul. Lakshmana had spotted him from across the room and yelled at the top of her small lungs:

“Hi Daddy! _Watch this!!_ ”

Oh, and he had watched all right...watched in horror as she launched herself right off the very top of the china cabinet with no hesitation and without a single trace of fear.

Thankfully, the tiny demon managed to hit her intended target on the way down; the armchair that her partner-in-crime and fellow hellraiser Ajay had so helpfully pushed into place. She landed with a thump and a giggle, nearly bouncing herself into the fireplace in the process and nearly giving him a fucking coronary. He never did figure out how in the hell she’d managed to climb up there in the first place.

Or the time they caught Ajay trying to ‘give Hurley a bath,’ which would have been fine…if it hadn’t involved luring a baby elephant into the house and attempting to shove him into the bathtub while his enraged mother trumpeted outside. She had been very intent on knocking an elephant-shaped hole through one of the Royal Palace walls. Or the time that…

“That…thing, on your back,” Ishwari says, sounding confused. “A little green shape.” She steps nearer, squinting at something in the vicinity of his shoulders. “It looks like a leaf. Strange, I never noticed it there before…”

“…what? I don’t…” Confused as well, Pagan twists around in order to examine whatever it is she’s talking about.

And she’s right.

Up high on his back and right between his shoulder blades, where such a thing has absolutely no business being…

…is one tiny, bright green leaf.

He freezes in stark, staring disbelief for one moment. Two. And then his quick mind kicks back into gear.

“Oh, pffft. I didn’t realize you hadn’t seen that ridiculous thing. A relic of my misspent youth, an unfortunate reminder of one very inebriated night when I lost a very stupid bet,” and chuckles ruefully. “But at least the agreement stipulated that I was the one who got to pick it out, and so I chose the smallest, least ugly thing on offer. That little leaf.” He offers a small, sheepish smile, as if he’s a bit embarrassed. “Such a silly little thing, isn’t it? I myself forget that it’s even there.”

This tale of youthful misadventure offers too many unimportant details, nerves forcing it out of him just a bit too quickly, but it’s not as if he’s in the habit of lying to her. The first time for it, in fact, as he scrambles madly to build the lie.

The lie that might be enough to keep them from being ripped apart.

The look that Ishwari gives him is a little odd, but he makes himself smile once more, this time a charming grin calibrated to help her forget all about the whole business. Distract her from questions, from doubt. To that end, he slides his arms around her waist and quickly pulls her into a kiss, one that he deepens after a few moments. It catches her off guard and leaves her no chance to do anything as mundane as thinking. Not while his tongue gently but throughly explores her mouth, that is. After that, it’s even easier to keep her distracted. When he catches her bottom lip with his teeth and sucks at it, she shivers all over in his arms and melts into his caressing hands.

Pagan holds her close and works to make her forget with lie after lie, now telling them with his body as well as his words. He kisses her and pretends to be hungry for it. Deceives her into thinking that he’s suddenly filled with heat and need…instead of only ice. He lies to her out of love and out of fear and hates himself, loathes the ease with which he does it. And she believes him.

She has no reason not to, after all, trusting him completely.

And she responds with such eager warmth, fitting her body to his with a sweet little groan against his mouth that he in no way deserves. Not when all he can feel in return is an icy chill in his blood, a cold that kills any honest desire he could possibly have summoned. Like a glass of ice water thrown all over his soul, as he tries not to shake.

The pathetic thing of it is that, if he does end up trembling in distress, overwhelmed by raw, frightened misery…it’ll just serve to reinforce the falsehood. She’ll undoubtedly mistake it for pleasure instead.

But before that thought gets the opportunity to depress him even further, Ishwari suddenly blinks and pulls away, puts space between them. The abruptness of it fills him with yet another layer of sharp anxiety, especially when she extricates herself from his arms altogether.

She knows. She’s figured it out somehow, that it’s no ordinary tattoo there between his shoulders, puts the pieces together and realizes what it all means. Sweat prickles under his arms and rolls down his ribs.

But when she turns away to peer sharply into the next room, he nearly goes limp with relief. Ordinarily he would be just as alarmed at the fact that it’s grown far too quiet out there; much too quiet for their little feral delinquents to not be in the process of destroying something. Sneakily, and with great glee. Last week it had been the television set.

“Oh, what are they into _now_ ,” she cries in frustration and marches out there to check, leaving him alone. For at least the eight-hundredth time or so, Pagan wishes that she didn’t so detest the idea of hiring a nanny to help with them. Or perhaps three. Yes, three might suffice. Ideally armed with tranq darts, as Ishwari raises her voice in response to whatever mischief she’s caught in progress out there. Wails of answering outrage echo off the walls.

With her attention occupied elsewhere, Pagan is momentarily free to turn his sharp gaze on that leaf again. This time, his examination is more careful, more thorough…more full of hate. The fucking thing looks so innocuous, so utterly normal. Exactly as if it really were the byproduct of some youthful indiscretion, merely some old embarrassment marking his skin from years ago. But he can only wish that’s all it was, and even if he wished a thousand times over for that to be the truth…he didn’t get it years ago. He didn’t even have it as of last night. Appearances aside, it’s far, far more dangerous than a bit of ink under his skin. It sits there on his body, indelible. Mocking him, as he stares at it thoughtfully, his eyes hooded and cold.

A brand, is what it is. Some mark of supposed ownership, like what you’d put on a farm animal. Of course, it would be him that ends up cursed with it; perhaps it’s divine retribution for the fact that his life was going all too well. But even so, it would hardly feel like a stifling, strangling weight in his chest…if it weren’t for one small, simple fact.

That little leaf on him isn’t Ishwari’s mark.

No idea how he’s so certain of it, but he is. He can feel the truth in it, just as he knows up from down. The woman he cares so deeply for, the mother of his children, doesn’t have one at all. In some cruel little quirk of the universe, this fucking mark he’s been saddled with belongs to someone else.

Such a fine practical joke, this soulmate business.

Especially when he considers the fact that his brand must also be out there somewhere in the world. Or, at least, that’s the way it’s rumored to work: apparently now that his has manifested itself, it means that someone carries his too. Perhaps not the visible mark yet, but they have the seed of what it will become buried in their skin. Inside them already, just waiting to go off at any moment, like a ticking time bomb. God. And god only knows what event will trigger it, or when, or what has possibly happened to trigger the one burned into him.

The thought of having a piece of him inside some strange person, of being forced into sharing a part of himself makes his fucking skin want to crawl off. Ishwari is only one who has any right to him, she’s the only one who ought to have such a thing.

Icy rage flares deep in Pagan’s eyes.

“Hmm, be that as it may…it hardly matters, as I’m already quite happily taken,” Pagan whispers with slow, enunciated precision, addressing the leaf as if it were an idiot child. With cold, quiet savagery. “Which means, just in case that it wasn’t mind-numbingly obvious, is that whoever you happen to be is of absolutely no consequence at all. None whatsoever, and I’ll tell you something else. I’ll even let you in on a little secret, one that you might not have considered. The fact is, and I can’t make this any more crystal clear: I am no one’s goddamn property.” He smiles. It stretches slowly across his face, sharp and hard and utterly without humor. But what it lacks in amusement, it more than makes up with in number of teeth showing, his nose rumpled up like something feral. A pitiless challenge. “Well, now that’s all out of the way, feel free to pack your fucking bags and fuck right off.”

Apparently these mark things baffle modern science; the researchers in charge of such things unsure of how to go about studying them, let alone how it all works. The people that bear them are notoriously close-lipped on the subject. But he does know that they happen to be astoundingly rare, and something about how they grow and mature with time. It isn’t some fated destiny that they seem to measure or reflect or…whatever it is, but merely the possibilities of such.

And then he remembers something else: rumor is that many of them just fade away, some shift in the trajectory in the lives involved that makes it impossible for the marks to match up, the people that bear them prevented from meeting.

That thought has him sighing in relief. He's being ridiculous, so worried over nothing, and the extreme likelihood of that very thing happening to his cheers him considerably. If he plays his cards right, Ishwari will never find out the truth of it. If he can pretend to have developed a new penchant for wearing shirts to bed until it goes away, she'll never even have to see it again. Won’t ever have to look at him and see that indelible brand on his skin and have it plant insidious doubts in her mind as to who the fuck he belongs to. Or make her lie awake at night and worry that someone out there has a claim on him that she has no part of, unable to break the chains of _kismet_ that might be able to drag them apart. He snorts at that, the very idea ludicrous.

It doesn’t matter what he has to do or how many falsehoods he has to spin or how many motherfuckers he has to kill. Whatever it is, he’ll do it, to protect what’s his. His little family, and no one’s going to take that away from him. He’d hate to do it, but he’ll lie through his teeth to her every damn day if that’s what it takes to keep her from doubting what they have together. That he’s hers, body and soul and all that shit, and no one else’s.

Pagan makes that solemn vow to her, to his children, a resolution he swears to himself that he’ll always keep. He’s a good man, in his own hard and morally gray fashion, a man capable of deep love and unswerving loyalty and unshakable devotion…for a very select few. And if his life had continued down that same path, the mark he bears would indeed have faded in time, a relationship of a very different sort having supplanted it and rendered it obsolete.

In that timeline, the other mark that’s the match to his will have never existed at all, its path coming to an end before it had even begun.

But it’s now the month of Ashwin, 1990, and the world is changing. All the paths will shift with one terrible act, like spreading ripples in a pond when a stone is dropped into the center. And those ripples will spread and reverberate across the pattern and change its shape for decades to come.

There was no way for Pagan to know that the night his mark appeared was the night that Mohan Ghale met with his CIA liaison. The man wished to offer a proposal, one he was assured again and again that he’d want to hear. So he agreed to meet at a bar in Tirtha, at a table in the very back, and for nearly an hour Agent Huntley had quietly and steadily filled Mohan’s ears with an exacting plan for how he could best obtain his violent, bloody revenge.

A seed planted deep in Mohan’s mind, a seed planted deep in Pagan’s skin, and all the patterns shifted and rearranged themselves into a new configuration.

.

.

.

.

.

.

In the days after, Pagan kept living.

Or surviving, anyway. It was easier to do so if he let surviving become a habit, merely a thing he did and didn’t think too pointedly about. Much easier if he didn’t think pointedly about anything at all. He let his mind sink as far as he possibly could into an animal-like state. Food and water and sleep, that was what was important for little animals to think about, so that was as far as he was willing to let his own mind go. Handguns and heroin and other such tools for ending one’s own existence also didn’t exist within the scope of an animal’s knowledge. And so, for a small, sad animal such as himself, things kept beyond his understanding therefore couldn’t be pondered, considered, thought about, obsessed over.

He went down to the dining room at semi-regular intervals, followed by the dark haze that seemed to perpetually surround him, and if he sat there for a time, someone would place food before him, and he would make himself eat it. It would appear and he would put it in his mouth and chew and swallow, salty with his own tears…but what did that matter to an animal? He let them run and drip off his nose and chin whenever they would, his face expressionless.

Occasionally, he would go out for long walks, just to be moving his legs. That was something that animals did, roaming about here and there. He walked in the mountain air until the burn in his muscles and lungs grew nearly intolerable, and then he would turn and begin the trek back to what was labelled ‘Home’ in his understanding of the world, but wasn’t quite sure if that were true anymore, not without the people that had made it that way, his fami…

Enough. Walk. One foot, and then the other. And he would, and kept his eyes averted from that tiny building that now existed in the courtyard, new enough that the whitewash still gleamed.

Washing the body seemed like something animals did now and again as well, he’d seen them at it: little birds bathing in a puddle, elephants flinging water over their backs with their trunks. So he does it too, and climbs into the shower and scrubs obligingly. Until he had the misfortune to look around and notice ( _wrong, too much thinking_ ) that Ishwari’s toiletries had all been removed. His head throbbed suddenly with a pulse of anger that was dull red, hot behind his eyeballs. How dare anyone touch her things. How fucking _dare_ they.

But he couldn’t sustain that rage. Found he didn’t particularly want to, like he wasn’t quite ready for it yet. Tiresome, and his mind sank back into the protective gray murk, his body moving on autopilot to make the washing happen.

His dreams are murky too, full of shadowy figures that seem meaningless.

As the days pass, sometimes something would come to him: a snatch of some memory, something with a bit of color to it, like a piece of mosaic. If it weren’t too much trouble at the time, not too much effort, he’d pick it up and examine it and put it with his collection of them, carefully nudging the new piece around until it clicks into place. In this way, he begins restoring what has been broken, reassembling the shattered pieces of himself into a configuration that’s fairly close to the old one. Not entirely. Couldn’t quite remember the old one, not perfectly. But that wasn’t important. Slowly, once more he becomes Pagan Min, King of Kyrat.

More or less.

In time, his anger returns, and that more than anything else is how he knows he’s coming back to himself. Not the dull throbbing rage involved when he allows himself to think of any of them, but something clean and pure, a righteous fury bubbling up in him, and he hugs it to himself in welcome. There’s a kind of joy in that feeling. Especially since he has unfinished business to attend to. Ishwari killed him, as was her right, as was proper, in his thinking. A mother’s prerogative; she had the greater claim on Mohan’s life, even more so than his as a father. But he’ll finish what she started. He’ll simply pick up where she left off.

Pagan smiles at that thought, smiles for the first time in months; dark and very, very cold.

When he thinks to look at his back in the mirror, he discovers that he no longer has one little leaf. Now there’s five, growing on a bit of vine that peeks out from under them.

***


	2. Baishakh, 2004

***

A little slip of paper tucked behind a sheet of scuffed plastic, in order to protect it from the elements. Just one amongst many others, situated in neat rows beside the buttons they label.

But this one, and Pagan touches his finger to it, this particular one is very, very different. This one has ‘Ghale’ written on it. Only the name, true…but while there are Ghales aplenty, he would know that writing anywhere.

It’s the very same handwriting as on the letter currently tucked deep in his wallet, carried like a talisman.

Before beginning this mad journey, he had debated the merits of bringing presents with him, a notion born of some daydream in which he showered them both with gifts they were delighted with, of burying them in grand, expensive presents that were all precisely what they wanted. But as much as he loved that idea, there was also something about it that didn’t feel quite right. Not quite the right thing to do, somehow. So in the end, all he’d ended up bringing them was all he really has to give: himself.

_But are you so sure of that? Do you truly have even that to offer? Perhaps you don’t._

Not much of a present, if he’s being perfectly honest. A bit like being given a gift with someone else’s name on the tag, really. An insult.

With ruthless speed, he shoves down on that niggling voice in his head, on a myriad of old doubts. For the thousandth time, the ten thousandth time, the hundred thousandth, he tells himself that his life is his own, and that he’s free to give himself to whomever he pleases, whenever it pleases him. He says it and wills it to be true, as if repeating it often enough will trigger a fundamental shift; like grains of sand or a magic spell, enough repetitions massed together will finally create some tipping point. He thinks all this, and has no idea that his shoulders awkwardly shift and bunch every time he does.

Stubbornly unchanged despite the passage of all these years, that fucking cattle brand had never faded from his skin like he’d planned and hoped and dreamed it would. Never faded in the slightest, not even the way a real tattoo would have, with those vibrant colors becoming a dusty shadow of what was once bright pigment. No, that’s not quite true either. It has changed over time, in fact…but only to grow still larger. Slowly, but inexorable, like a tectonic plate.

Like a parasite, and Pagan shoves that down too, desperately.

His random thoughts on that…thing are meaningless, and have no bearing on reality. It’s ridiculous of him to believe there’s any meaning or merit in them. That brand on him is only a fluke and doesn’t represent a fucking thing but irrational superstition, and if there’s any question of it he’ll tell her that again and again, repeating it until they both know it’s true without a single doubt.

One extended finger comes to rest on the button’s grubby surface, directly beside Ishwari’s neat, precise lettering.

His hand trembles, and he can’t force it to stop.

In all his daydreams about this very moment, he’d always imagined that he would be met with a joyous welcome. That their arms would be held open for him, that the only people he truly loves would be ready to gather him up, to hold him close. He suspects that this is the case because the opposite scenario had been far too painful to contemplate.

_Coward. Fool. Imbecile. Do you really believe all those lies you tell yourself? Actually think that’s how it would be?_

Pagan jerks his hand back as if burnt.

Immediately, he spins away from the door and takes the three steps down to street level in one quick stride to pace the sidewalk in front of the building…yet again. For at least the third time now, his long legs restlessly pace and pace along that same stretch of narrow, cracked cement directly in front of the building.

Seeing that name there is what’s shaking him up so badly, he thinks, trying not to fuck up his hair in his agitation as he rakes a hand back through it. For so long, she occupied a nebulous place in his mind, untethered to any actual location. Kyrat was Here, and in long, painful, hard-won acceptance, she had been vaguely Over There, Somewhere. He knew better than to do this to himself, he really had…but then he went and let that idiot De Pleur talk him into coming here, like a fool, disturbing that careful balance he’d worked so hard to build.

Now, the stark reality of seeing it for himself unexpectedly slaps him in the face. A kick to the gut. She exists right here, in number 122 of this shabby block of flats, and now lives her life in this place that has nothing whatsoever to do with him or what they had together. A place they never shared, surrounded by nothing that seems the least bit familiar. After years of being on his mountain with only the wind and snow and those vast, silent peaks for company, he finds the endless clamor and smoggy heat that envelops him here to be unnerving, almost bewildering. Once, of course, it wouldn’t have been that way, but Hong Kong was so long ago now that it scarcely feels real either, having been a world belonging solely to that Other Pagan. An unbroken man, one who never had to try to fit his own pieces back together in some way that he could recognize as himself.

Unmarked, and whole, and free.

That was the man she knew, not…this, not whoever he was now. A stranger wearing a face that, by this point, might only vaguely resemble a man she once knew. So many years…how old would his boy be now? Fifteen? Or sixteen, now that it’s Baishakh again? Nearly grown, in any case, and plenty long enough for his childish memories of him to grow a thick haze, dusty with disuse. Unless Ishwari’s worked to keep him alive in Ajay’s mind, it’s entirely possible that he won’t know him at all.

But as painful and disturbing as the thought is, one even worse strikes him…will _he?_ After so long apart, will he even be able to recognize his own little boy anymore, his boy whose eyes had always looked so, so much like his mother’s.

Or as he nears his manhood, is it Mohan he more closely resembles now?

Pagan comes to a halt in the middle of the sidewalk, pacing forgotten. After long moments of stillness, he takes one slow, measured step back. Unlike his agitated but still graceful strides earlier, this one is unsteady, halting. But he persists, and one step becomes another, then yet another. Only the first is really difficult, he finds; by the fourth or fifth it becomes so easy to do. Such a simple thing in the end, to finally accept that the heavy weight he carries will always be there. An old, old weight that he wears balanced against the weight of his heart; not easily, but at least one that’s bearable. A known heaviness he’s already well-acquainted with and more or less accustomed to. So why torture himself further, by adding needlessly to it?

There’s no place for him here, he realizes that now. Perhaps there never was, as he turns his back to their door, back the way he came…and keeps on walking.

If Pagan had happened to glance up at any point during that day, he undoubtedly would’ve found himself looking directly into Ishwari’s beloved eyes in a young man’s hard, wary face. Up on the roof to enjoy a stolen cigarette, as he watched some strange guy fondle their buzzer and nameplate in between sessions of pacing up and down the sidewalk.

In all the time he spent in front of that building, wavering there with his heart slamming up in his throat and his stomach roiling with anxiety, he never once noticed that he was being watched. Too preoccupied with his own pain, he never felt the dark, hawk-like gaze that raked over him, warily observing as Pagan’s finger touched their name again and again.

If he had looked up and met Ajay’s eyes just once, everything might’ve been different; for him, for Ishwari, for all three of them. In that moment, the lines of probability that stretch between them may well have shifted into yet another configuration, their pattern changing once again.

But he didn’t.

Still completely unaware of those eyes on him, Pagan made his agonizing, wrenching choice…and turned to go.

As Ajay watched him slowly walk away, he reached up to scratch idly between his bare shoulders, and then realized it felt kind of weird there when he did. Warm and a little irritated, almost like he had gotten a sunburn in that spot or something…but also kind of good.

It isn’t until much later that evening that he remembers to check to see why that patch of skin felt weird, and then stands there with his stunned mind whirling as he peers at his back in the mirror. Stands there staring for ages while what it means for him gradually sinks in, nervous excitement filling him as he senses his life shifting onto a new, unknown trajectory.

Like a new tattoo right between his shoulders, but one he definitely never went and actually got. There, dusky pink against his tanned skin, in soft shades that remind him of roses…

…is one tiny, ornate, impossibly beautiful feather.

As soon as Pagan had gotten back from the airport and ordered the servants out of his rooms, he’d merely kicked his luggage out of his way as he went in search of supplies, more than ready to do a little self-medicating. Not even two o’clock in the afternoon, but who fucking cares? He sure as hell doesn’t give a good goddamn, and it’s not as if there’s anyone else around to consider.

She’s not coming back.

Not her, and not Ajay, and especially not the baby. None of them are.

He despises that mark worked indelibly into his skin for one very simple reason: that it isn’t hers. In his mind, that’s more than enough reason to loathe it. The love of his life, the mother of his child, the woman whom he would have married in a heartbeat, given a kingdom to, died for…and here he is stamped with a label that says he belongs to someone else, some fucking stranger. Branded like a goddamn farm animal with no say in the matter at all. Like he’s _property._

The self-pitying spiral he’s managed to get caught up in yet again is terribly familiar, but he doesn’t have enough left in him to give a shit. Especially when he’s already so nicely on his way to getting utterly, royally fucked up, and takes another swig right from the bottle, savoring the burn as it goes down.

He still has five more lines of the best Columbia has to offer left on the mirror in front of him, but the coke, as marvelously absorbing as it is, isn’t what keeps drawing his eye. His gaze keeps getting pulled to the razorblade lying there beside the trails of white powder, over and over again.

He reaches out, only a little clumsily, and picks it up. As soon as he touches it, that self-pity roars into a conflagration of rage instead, like a flipped switch, a match in a puddle of petrol as his fingers tremble.

Damn the universe, daring to brand him and pull him about by the nose. Fuck that. His life is his own. Dirty and fucked up and full of regrets, but _his._ He shoved his middle finger in his father’s face, and then into the faces of anybody who opposed him, laughing while he did it. He’s always done exactly as he damn well pleased, bruised and bloody but by god, never broken.

And this shit doesn’t get to break him either, as he shoves himself dizzily to his feet and stomps his unsteady way to the bathroom, the better to see the thing’s excision. He strips his shirt off in front of the big vanity mirror and flings it to the side and twists his back so that he can get a good look at the blasted thing. A tiny voice of reason informs him that not only is this a bad idea, it’s also a _stupid_ one, but in his inebriated state it’s easy enough to ignore. A snarl of rage suddenly twists his handsome face. Enough fucking around, he decides, and jams the point of the blade under the bottom most leaf in self-righteous defiance.

Wanting it off him. _Now._

He grips the blade tighter in his sweating fingers and sweeps it upward, the blade sharp enough that it slices deeply with no more effort than pulling a zipper. He cuts right through the middle of his cattle brand, leaving a sizable gash that immediately begins to well up and run. Dark red washes over the green leaves and mutes their vibrant colors.

The blade suddenly slips out of his trembling fingers and falls into the sink with a metallic tinkling. He grips the edge of the sink with his knuckles gone white and trembles all over, squeezing his eyes shut against the sight of his own face.

Years and years ago, when Ajay was small, he had once spilled a cup of juice all over a stack of reports on his office desk, ruining them. In his ensuing flash of anger, he had reached out on impulse and slapped that little face. Much too hard, leaving the bright red mark of his hand behind.

The instantaneous, shocked regret he felt then is exactly what he feels now. An achingly familiar feeling of being a monster, of hurting something small and helpless.

Ajay had stood there and tried to sniff back his tears with that handprint on his cheek like an accusation, and the way that he had been so very, very small, and himself so very, very large had broken his heart. And then the way he was still willing to run to him for comfort when he held his arms out for him had broken it all over again. He sat in the floor of his office and pulled him into his lap and held him while he snuffled into the front of his shirt, had cradled him close and rocked him and rocked him. Even after Ajay had cried himself out and fallen asleep in his arms, Pagan still couldn’t bear to put him down. He had held him and petted his unruly black hair for hours.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers to his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. He shoves his hair out of his eye with the back of his bloody fist. “I am so, so sorry. I’m sorry that you’re tied to such a fuckup.” He reaches back and touches the bright leaves and vines, bloodying his fingers too as he runs them gently along the damage. Something else beautiful that he’s marred, something else that he’s managed to callously wound.

It occurs to him that he might even have somehow wounded them as well: the poor fucker who’s tied to him in this demeaning way, whoever it is out there that the capricious universe has seen fit to saddle him with. The person that’s gone and had the bloody rotten luck to draw his card, a drug lord turned warlord turned dictator, and isn’t that shitty enough without him preemptively shoving knives into them?

Yet another someone whose heart he’s undoubtedly going to break.

Pagan’s rage slowly but surely drains out of him, not able to hold onto it as he sags against the sink in exhaustion. Destined to be robbed even of that, cheated of his defiant anger. Which is really his own doing; if he’d wisely resisted the impulsive urge to perform amateur surgery, he could have gone right on hating the fucking thing in peace.

As soon as his hands are steady enough for such work and he’s certain his knees aren’t going to buckle, he goes and fetches the first aid kit. The big one, with the suture set in it. He spreads it out on the counter in readiness, flushes the wound with disinfectant, and gets to stitching.

There’s some sort of life lesson here, he thinks. Such a tedious and difficult task to fix what was done in mere seconds of idiocy, as he spends the better part of an hour attempting to repair the damage he wrought. Not to mention painful, but lidocaine always gives him the shakes. So he simply sets his jaw, working to line up the edges as neatly as possible with the tiniest stitches his big fingers can manage. Agonizingly slow going, as he curses under his breath at the growing crick in his neck from having to twist to see it properly in the mirror, in frustration at doing such delicate work backwards and reversed. He grits his teeth and forces himself to keep on sewing even though each and every one of those minuscule stitches burns like all hell, a fire searing under his skin as he pushes the needle in and out. But then again, that’s precisely what he deserves, as he runs with cold sweat that keeps threatening to drip into his eyes, making the task even harder.

At any point he could have easily had the Army physician come in, with no questions asked…but doing so would entail the risk of that little tidbit of information getting leaked, a problem that doesn’t currently exist. So he hides in his own bathroom and does his own repairs, because the last thing he needs is any of his myriad enemies to catch wind of it and somehow use its existence against him. No one knows about the secret he carries between his shoulders, other than himself, and he very much wishes to keep it that way.

His leafy, rather beautiful secret. Again, that sense of guilt and regret and pity wells up in him, even stronger than before. Having done his best for it, he tenderly dabs a bit of ointment on and covers it with a bandage, his hands offering a gentle apology. Seeking to give comfort.

“There there, it’ll be all right now,” Pagan tells it, his throat suddenly tight and burning. Standing there and speaking those words aloud with actual fucking tears welling in his eyes, he has the distinct impression that he might very well be going mad. Or at least, madder than he already is.

He gingerly pulls his shirt back on and sprawls out on the couch, and that’s the last thing he remembers.

“Where the _fuck_ did all this blood come from?!”

Pagan jerks awake so hard he nearly falls off the sofa, a terrible taste in his mouth and the terrible racket of his sister’s voice screeching along his eardrums.

Yuma snorts. “Look at you. Pitiful. _Weak._ What did you manage to break this time?”

“Only my own heart,” and laughs at the sour scowl this earns him, even if it does make the sick pounding in his head worse.

When he rolls over, his back and shoulders twinge with soreness, but discovers that he rather likes that feeling. Somehow a good kind of soreness, an itchy, healing sort that helps to reassure him that it will be all right. Despite the hellish nature of the circumstances and a truly horrid hangover that’s just the cherry on the sundae, he might even cherish that small pain. It feels as if it’s a pact, a peace treaty written in blood, a closely-held secret they share. Just him and his wild, leafy vine, the two of them against the world.

His enduring hatred at being tied to the whims of a fickle universe lives on, an ever-present, burning coal that smolders deep inside of him…but the mark on his body is just a representation of the forces involved, not the actual forces themselves. Something devoid of blame for any of this shit, he’s been directing his wrath at it for years now…not because it was in any way the correct target for his rage, but because it was the convenient one.

It took him long enough, like a particularly stubborn, stupid dog that has to be shown how to heel again and again and _again,_ but he finally understands that now.

“You’re beyond pathetic,” she sneers at him, startling him out of his thoughts. “Seriously. All of this bullshit over that worthless bitch in America? You were gone for almost a fucking week. And for what? What did you possibly hope to accomplish?”

Still lying on the couch, he discovers a crack running through the ceiling plaster overhead and studies it. His eyes follow along the faint, winding path it takes, until it passes beyond the point of where he’d either have to get up, or crank his neck in order to keep tracing its path. And he doesn’t feel particularly inclined toward either at the moment. Instead, he tilts his head back in order to look at her. He was hoping that this would change the appearance of her deep scowl into something more cheerful; turn that frown upside-down, and all that! But unfortunately, it does little to shift her face away from anything but deeply bitchy lines.

“Well, aren’t you going to speak up?” she eventually barks at him. “Since it’s possible you forgot already, do you want to take a guess at the sum of what you accomplished on that little trip? No? It’s zero, by the way. No real surprises there.” She stares haughtily down at him, and he has to suppress laughter at the way he can see right up her nostrils. “Congratulations, you managed to do absolutely nothing worthwhile.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he says, with utmost politeness. “I didn’t realize you were actually wanting an answer. After all, you can see why I might’ve been hesitant to interrupt such a carefully...nay, _lovingly_ prepared recitation of all my flaws and shortcomings. By all means, do continue. I’ll just lie here and shut my eyes while I’m listening, if you don’t mind.”

She throws her hands up in disgust. “Whatever, Pagan. Crawl back in the fucking bottle if that’s what you want, but I have work to do. Some of us don’t have the luxury of being able to drop everything and go chase a piece of ass halfway around the globe.”

And that…is almost enough to push the constant simmer of his rage into boiling over. Nearly enough provocation to give her what she wants to see. He can feel it trying to, like an itch inside his already pounding skull. Dangling the sheer offense in his face and daring him to snap at it.

Ever since That Day, she makes a habit of jamming her fingers into his raw wounds over and over, as if she were under the impression that this would somehow purge whatever weakness she felt remained in him. As if doing her best to hurt him with it would make him stronger in some way, would help those wounds to heal…instead of the opposite.

Why she thought so was beyond him.

Or maybe that was the point: like stabbing at a caged tiger with a sharpened stick, perhaps it was merely about having the power to make him react, and over time the thrill of exposing his enraged pain again and again had become irresistible.

He grits his teeth and forces his face into as serene an expression as possible, refusing to let her have the satisfaction of knowing how easily she’s able to get under his skin. Determined to deny her the pleasure of watching him blow.

When it becomes obvious that he’s not going to react to that barb, she rolls her eyes. And then flings him the sort of gesture that would be right at home in one of Kowloon’s filthy back alleys before stalking out of the room.

Finally, _finally,_ a little fucking peace, and he sighs. Now that she’s out of earshot, it leaves him free to talk to his leaves all he likes.

“Don’t listen to a word that cunt has to say,” he murmurs to them reassuringly, confiding in them. “I’ll admit, it’s entirely possible that I’m somewhat to blame for her cruel streak, but nevertheless! There’s so much that she only thinks she understands something of. Including me. Ever so certain that she knows me oh so well…but guess what? She doesn’t. Doesn’t know fuck-all, and never really did.”

Once, despite that, Pagan would have readily shown her his secret. Would’ve trusted her, told her anything…but that time has long passed.

The days pass, turning into weeks, months, years. He barely leaves the Palace anymore; no need to. Here, at least, no one’s likely to be shooting at him. Eric takes care of his public appearances and all the bullshit that entails, and his governors seem to have things at least marginally in hand. He tells himself this, and turns a blind eye to the worst of it, and no one dares contradict him to his face. No one argues with him. No one ever tells him no.

Sometimes he invites a taste of the outside world into his gilded cage, just for variety. His people talk to their people, money changes hands, and the occasional visitor appears. Some actor or musician to entertain him, some chef to tempt him with dainties, some up-and-coming designer to show him the latest Parisian trends. He watches from his balcony as they make the trek up from the Fortress to his front door, a route that grows shabbier and more derelict with each passing year. A mess of downed power lines and overgrown brush and the occasional broken statue, of old, peeling paint. Even the front walk is muddy, and he smiles, hard and tight. Let that be their first impression of him.

Although, to be fair, they seldom get the chance to form much of an impression past the initial one. He usually ends up sending them away again nearly as fast as they arrive. _Boring_. They all bore him to fucking tears. 

All their trite conversations begin and end with two things: money, and status. He often ends up laughing, sometimes right in their shocked, simpering faces. As if any of it matters. All the riches and adoration in the world won’t buy him what he really wants, anything he actually desires to have, so what use is it? He has a vault stuffed to overflowing and a giant fucking statue of himself done in real gold (yet another lesson in how cocaine often makes Bad Ideas seem like Good Ones)…and yet, none of these people seem to understand. They don’t realize that he’d give up all of that shit in a heartbeat, if he could only trade it in return for one more day.

An hour.

A single minute.

To have that minute and be able to spend it with his arms full of the people he loves would be worth more than any grubby little kingdom, in his thinking. Far more. Everything.

When his thoughts start wandering down this path is when he decides that it’s high time for his company to be running along now. A brief word from him is all it takes to have whoever-it-is packed up and set on their merry way as they’re quickly escorted by his soldiers to a waiting vehicle. Usually the same jeep as the ride up, and sometimes the engine will scarcely have had a chance to cool before they’re climbing right back in. As when they arrived, he stands on the balcony to watch their departure, sending them off back down his mountain with a sarcastic little wave.

Far better are his own dinner parties, which he throws whenever he starts feeling a bit maudlin, a little nostalgic for the old days. His own Guardsmen are much better company and he plays the gracious host for those men he fought and bled with once upon a time, some of whom he’s known since boyhood. They sit around the big dinner table and get drunk on _raksi_ and laugh and joke and reminisce, and for a while he’s just another old soldier, all of them grown old with him. The pleasure of camaraderie. They might understand him better than anyone. 

But sometimes even that sort of gathering is too much, too bittersweet. Too many reminders of pain and loss and his own naïve ambition crushed into the dirt.

Kyrat has a way of doing that, crushing dreams.

The earth keeps turning and the seasons change with it, flashing by brief and bright…but ultimately forgettable. He himself seems a stationary point around which time moves and drifts past; held motionless, locked in his place at the top of the world with each day, or week or month appearing to be very much like all the rest. He stays in his holding pattern, and in the meantime the ghosts of old injuries slowly return to haunt him. On some mornings now he wakes stiff and aching in the cold; to shiver in the thin mountain air that he used to find refreshing. Not yet out of his prime, not quite…but surely edging toward it. 

Nothing else seems to change for him, not realizing that time is slipping through his fingers as the years of his life blur and run together, and all the while it feels as if it never will.

And then, an autumn comes that proves to very different from the others, one that brings the steady turning to an abrupt halt. A long, golden autumn, and while the falling leaves are drifting across Kyrat in a shower of reds and oranges and yellows, Ishwari takes her last breaths, and quietly drifts away with them.

She dies in California, across the world and across an expanse of blue ocean that might as well have been infinite.

She dies, and makes their long separation an irrevocable one. A permanent one.

She dies far, far too young, and he wasn’t there for it.

He wasn’t there.

Once, years ago, he had even managed to find his way across to the other side of all that water; had gone and gone until he’d made it all the way to Los Angeles, where she had been. 

But it hadn’t mattered.

Despite the fact that his feet had touched California soil...in the end, he still wasn’t able to cross that ocean.

It shocks him to realize that ten years have passed since that day he stood on her doorstep, wavering there and unable to force his finger to press that bell. The day he finally came to terms with reality, with the cold, hard fact that he wasn’t hers. No matter how much he wanted to be, how much he wished it otherwise; no matter how much he snarled and fought and railed against the world, he still couldn’t make it true. A sorry excuse for a man who could never be hers, because he couldn’t even give her himself. Never having had that to give freely, to whom he wishes…not while he bears a label declaring someone’s ownership of him, a claim staked on his skin.

Both the king of a nation and a branded slave; he walks weighed down by his chains, the heaviest of which by far is the one locked around his heart…and yet, the mark of his own slavery is so, so beautiful. A mark that he only wishes he could still hate.

Perhaps Ishwari even saw through his pathetic excuse for a lie all those years ago, and put two and two together, and tried to spare them both what pain she could.

He had fully expected the news of her passing to fill him with rage and rip him apart, _break_ him all over again…but it never comes. All he seems to be able to feel is a sense of sorrow; one that’s profoundly deep, but dull. A toothache of the soul. That, and a fleeting pity for the both of them.

_I’ve no idea if it was kismet or your gods or perhaps just simple bad luck, but whatever it was, it always seemed so very determined to take a giant shit on us both. The whole world was against us, my dear, and the world won, and I’m truly sorry for that._

That same night, the mark between his shoulders grows warm and tingles again.

“Well, I suppose you’ve gotten what you wanted. She’s gone, are you happy now?” he tells it, noting the new growth as he examines it in the mirror. The words themselves are more bitter than what he actually feels, instead coming out dulled by that sense of exhaustion. 

And then, as he's said to it a hundred times before: “Why on earth must you be so goddamned _pretty?_ It’s frankly ridiculous.”

Stunningly so, in fact; having grown over the years to fill the space between his shoulders with a veritable mass of leafy vines that run wild over his skin, bursting with vitality and glowing like they have the sun behind them. Green leaves and gold sunlight and rich, beautiful life. 

Just looking at the damn thing makes him feel the teeniest, tiniest bit younger.

He peers at it and searches for the scar, but he did such a good job with his careful stitching years ago that even under close scrutiny, he still can’t determine exactly where the cut had been.

Pagan gusts a sigh. “No, it looks as if it’s just you and I now…whatever that fucking means.”

***


End file.
